Cab

How to spell cab

3 letters · 1 syllable

How to pronounce cab

What does cab mean?

1. nounA car with a driver that you hire to take you somewhere for a fare.
2. nounThe enclosed section of a lorry, crane, or locomotive where the driver or operator sits.

Cab in a sentence

• She hailed a cab outside the train station.

• The trucker climbed into the cab and started the engine.

• We shared a cab to the airport to split the fare.

• A small heater kept the cab of the crane warm all winter.

Where does cab come from?

Language of origin: French

Cab is a shortening of cabriolet, the name of a light, two-wheeled, one-horse carriage that became popular in early nineteenth-century cities. Cabriolet came into English from French, where it described a vehicle whose bouncy ride suggested a little leap; the French word grew from cabriole, meaning 'a caper' or 'a leap', which in turn traces back to the Italian capriola and ultimately to the Latin capreolus, a 'wild goat', from caper meaning 'goat'. The idea was that the springy carriage bounced along like a frisky goat. By the 1820s Londoners had clipped the long word down to the brisk single syllable 'cab', and when these vehicles were hired out for the public the term naturally transferred to today's taxis. The same goat-leaping root also lurks behind 'caper' and 'capriole', so the tame little word hides a surprisingly lively ancestry.

How the word is built

• cab (clipped form of cabriolet, itself from French cabriole 'a leap')